Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed James Carville, saying 'wokeness' is 'a term almost exclusively used by older people these days'

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AOC slammed strategist James Carville for blaming "wokeness" for Terry McAuliffe's defeat.

She said that "wokeness" is "a term almost exclusively used by older people these days."

It's the latest in an ongoing intra-Democratic debate about how to talk about issues like race and gender.

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On Friday, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — a leading progressive voice within her party and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress — slammed long-time Democratic strategist James Carville for being out of touch with the modern Democratic Party amid the debate over its election losses.

"The average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits," the congresswoman wrote on Twitter. "So that should tell you all you need to know."

Carville, who originally gained national prominence by helping then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton win the 1992 presidential election, told PBS on Wednesday that "wokeness" was to blame for Democrat Terry McAuliffe's loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial election.

"What went wrong is just stupid wokeness," said Carville, referring to rhetoric about defunding the police and renaming buildings. "Some of these people need to go to a 'woke' detox center or something."

"They're expressing a language that people just don't use, and there's backlash and a frustration at that," he also said. Carville has a history of attacking so-called "wokeness" — a catch-all term with lots of purported meanings, in this case referring to the language progressives use to talk about social issues like race and gender. In 2020, he gave an interview to Vox where he made similar points.

AOC made her critique while calling out a local news story that claimed she said McAuliffe "wasn't woke enough" because she said that "moderate Dems" were "ceding white swing voters to the right" by not forcefully engaging Republicans on the issues.

"How can news outlets even attribute words to me I didn't say?" she wrote. "I said there are limits to trying to mobilize a campaign with a 100% moderate strategy without mobilizing the base. Said nothing [about] 'wokeness' which is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days."

She then took aim at Carville, writing that the "average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits."

She ended by arguing that the term itself, rather than being denigrating to older people, is actually insulting to voters under 45.

"Don't wonder why youth turnout falls when Dems talk about them like this," she wrote. "We need everyone."

michiganlibrarian on November 6th, 2021 at 02:04 UTC »

I can’t take another headline with “slammed” in the title. I just.... 🤦🏼‍♀️

nexus6mandroid on November 5th, 2021 at 23:12 UTC »

Downvote this shitty article. It has zero substance besides "he said she said" bullshit and clips from twitter.

It might be good in some indirect way that Carville is outing himself as a geriatric dipshit. But imo, this article ignores the most critical internal conflict in the Democratic Party: the existential division between corporate democrats and moderates vs. progressives / leftists / etc.

It is trying to turn that critical divide into a sports game.

We basically just lost the one chance in 10 years to start seriously preparing for the incoming environmental catastrophes for climate change, even though the scientists say we have a closing window of about 3 - 5 years to take serious action.

No one should give a shit about these meaningless diatribes and twitter battles, they're just nonsense conflicts getting reported because corporate media wants to distract us from how badly corporations have fucked over our political system and our futures. The easiest way to do that is by turning politics into a sports game. Old people vs young people. Red team vs blue team. My favorite politicians vs your favorite politicians.

Friendly Reminder: Business Insider is owned by Axel Springer SE, and says that "solidarity with the libertarian values of the United States of America" is one of its core principles on its own website. Business Insider was literally funded by the CIA at one point.

Translation: They are not fucking progressive. Be skeptical of this bullshit.

walker1555 on November 5th, 2021 at 21:44 UTC »

Obama very carefully avoided talking about race much of the time. It upset some folks, but it helped him capture the white house. So there's some truth to just being smart politically. Once you get in office, if you want to be more progressive, give it a go.